Decades of physical cruelty and child sex abuse allegations at a children’s home in Rhu have been uncovered by a BBC investigation.

Victims have told how they suffered at the hands of staff at Lagarie Children’s Home.

In BBC Scotland TV programme Disclosure: Suffer the Children – which was broadcast on Monday night – victims told harrowing stories of abuse at the home during two separate regimes.

Between 1949 and 1982, hundreds of seafarers’ children were sent to live at Lagarie after being taken in by the Sailors’ Society – a Christian cause supporting the families of men working at sea.

Angela Montgomery and her sisters Mary and Norma were sent to Lagarie as their mother had died young and their father was at sea.

They told how they were subjected to sustained sexual abuse after Reverend William Barrie and his wife Mary took charge in 1972.

The Montgomery sisters claimed they were raped hundreds of times by Rev Barrie.

Angela, now 56, said: “After a while, there was no point struggling or fighting. It became part and parcel of life at Lagarie.”

She also tells how children were taken from Lagarie to conventions to be abused by people associated with Barrie and the Sailors’ Society.

During an earlier regime, allegations centered on Anne Millar, the matron of the home who professed to be a devout Christian.

Roddy and Philip Donald, now 58, say they were sexually abused by Lagarie’s gardener Norman Skelton, who died in 1999.

The Montgomery sisters and others gave statements about the abuse to Strathclyde Police in the early 2000s, but no one was charged. A second police probe, prompted by the Sailors’ Society, concluded in 2016.

Mary Barrie was questioned and a report was sent to the procurator fiscal, but she was never charged. She died last year. Rev Barrie died in 1993 without ever having to answer any questions about abuse allegations.

Stuart Rivers, chief executive of the charity, said: “We regret that this ever happened and have apologised unreservedly.”

Disclosure: Suffer the Children, tonight at 10.40pm, BBC One Scotland.